Profile of a pro-dom
One woman's experiences working as a dominatrix
By Cassie Harwood
*At the request of its proprietor, the name of the SM establishment in this story has been withheld.
When Lenore Bates is asked what she does for a living—an innocuous enough question frequently used as an icebreaker between strangers—she sometimes struggles with her response. The answer, put frankly, is that she works as a dominatrix at a professional BDSM “dungeon,” where she specializes in domination and various forms of bondage and fetish. But when posed with the casual query, she sometimes takes pause to consider what thoughts or remarks an honest reply might elicit in the questioner.
“It’s really weird, because when you’re at a bar, or someone meets you for the first time through a friend, they’ll ask ‘So what do you do?’” she explains, as she sips a beer one evening after a shift. “I don’t really like to hide it from people, but I kind of try to use discretion—I don’t really just blurt it out to people I just meet or don’t really know.” She gives a quick, wry laugh, adding, “I guess it kind of sucks that it’s such a common question.”
Bates is one of about two-dozen women who work at an SM (short for sadism and masochism) parlor run from a two-story home in Oakland. The business is one of only a few East Bay establishments through which people—in this case, almost exclusively men—can pay money in exchange for a variety of discreet, fetishistic services, save for actual sex, which range from being tied up with ropes to being pierced with needles.
Bates stands exactly 5 feet tall, but on this night she is boosted a few extra inches by a pair of foam thong sandals that cling to her feet with fuzzy pink straps. She has a wavy brown bob and short bangs that spiral over the top half of her forehead. Her cutesy outfit, coupled with her round cheeks and button-shaped nose, make her look almost like a teenager. But when she talks about her work in the sex industry, a tone of maturity belies her appearance.
Lenore Bates—a pseudonym the 30-year-old uses for purposes of her job—isn’t self-conscious about her occupation, but sometimes, especially in instances of small talk, she just doesn’t feel like discussing it. And though she will disclose the nature of her work to some, the majority of people might be hard-pressed to guess it.
Her parents, who live in Washington and whom she describes as “gun toting, Republican, born-again Christians,” are among those from whom Bates chooses to withhold the precise details of her livelihood. She doesn’t want to stir up conflict among her family, which includes two younger brothers. “I think if they called me on it I would admit it,” she explains, earnestly. But until that happens, she says it’s easier to keep them in the dark. “With my mom, it’s just easier to let her think what she thinks and just do what I do.”
She also knows that if she were to confide in her mom, the news would quickly travel to her dad, who would, as she puts it, “just lose it.”
Her dad sees issues as very black-and-white, Bates says with resolve. As if to elucidate her point, she explains that his favorite TV show is CNN’s Crossfire, a now-cancelled news show that featured debates between left- and right-wing political pundits. “Try to explain anything to this guy—it’s not gonna happen.”
Once, when the topic arose during a monthly phone conversation with her mom, she replied that she was working at a friend’s business. That much was true: Sage Travigne, The SM establishment's owner, could be called a friend. Upon further maternal grilling, she explained that the business in question was an answering service, which is only true insofar as part of her job entails answering a door for arriving clients.
House of Bondage
Three years ago, Bates was working part-time at both a café and a package-shipping store, the combined income from which wasn’t much. Before that she had made good money working as a framer, but the stressful workload wasn’t worth the high pay. One night at a bar, while talking with a friend who had formerly worked as a dominatrix at the East Bay house, Bates had joked, “God, I have to pee all the time—if only I could make money doing it.”
Conveniently enough, in the world of BDSM—short for three fetishistic elements of sexual play: bondage/discipline, dominance/submission and sadism/masochism—there is money to be made from an overactive bladder. “Golden showers” are a well-sought service by which a mistress, or “dominant,” urinates on a submissive partner for the sexual pleasure of one or both parties. At Bates' place of employment, such engagements are common practice.
Bates says that even before working as a dominatrix, she was drawn to the aesthetic of fetish wear, like corsets, boots and leather, and enjoyed mild elements of SM in her personal life. When she rails off the long list of her pre-existing sexual interests—spanking, bondage, strap-ons, choking, slapping—it’s not hard to see why her friend made the recommendation. “It sounded like a really awesome job,” Bates recalls.
Shortly after that fateful conversation at the bar, Bates scheduled an interview. She was already acquainted with Travigne through common friends in town. Still, she remembers, “I was hella nervous.”
The house, which Travigne calls a “house of bondage” for the five rooms inside that are styled for different role-play scenarios and SM activities, sits inconspicuously on a corner in a quiet Oakland neighborhood.
In professional fashion, Bates arrived early for her interview and was ushered into a living room to wait for Travigne. “I was expecting to see some freaky shit,” she admits. Instead, the room where she sat was modestly decorated, complete with a large fish tank and a black leather couch. Perhaps the only indication that she wasn’t in just any house was the selection of coffee table books sitting before her, which included books with titles like The Exotic Erotic Ball and The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage.
That she had no prior experience as a dominatrix was not a detriment to Bates’ prospects of employment. “I take people with all different levels of experience or inexperience, as long as they are open and able to learn,” Travigne says during an interview in the “pink room”—a room on the second floor of the house with an abundance of mirrors and a sternly edged wooden desk standing against one wall.
Travigne has been involved in the SM scene for nearly two decades, and started her own professional dominatrix business in 1994. “I thought she was pretty and nice and I thought she seemed smart,” Travigne recalls of her first impression of Bates. “Plus, she seemed interested in the work, and that’s pretty much what I’m looking for.”
Sessions at the house cost an average of $160 for one hour. Depending on how long a woman has been working there, she is paid a certain percentage of that amount. New employees earn 50 percent of a session’s cost, which works out to $80 per appointment. Most women average two appointments a day, and the time in-between is spent doing light housework and hanging out in the kitchen in the back of the house, where they read, cook, and share banter.
Learning the Ropes
As a standard practice at the house, new-hires will sit in on the sessions of more experienced workers, sometimes participating. In this way, they can learn about and practice different SM methods, insofar as they feel comfortable, before seeing clients on their own. Each dominatrice establishes a written inventory of what she is comfortable doing, and what she wishes to avoid, so she can be matched with an appropriate client. That list can change with time and experience. “There’s no pressure to do something that doesn’t appeal to you,” Travigne says. “The people here do what they want to do.”
On her first day, Bates watched a co-worker spank a male customer as he worshipped the woman’s stockinged feet. Bates was then invited to try her hand at the client’s behind, and from there was swiftly indoctrinated into the trade: She performed a golden shower later that day. She giggles when she mentions it: “Yep. I did a golden shower on my first day.”
One of the first dominatrices under whom Bates apprenticed was particularly vicious in the way she handled her customers. Bates sat-in with her a number of times and says she was “very strict and sadistic.” As a result, Bates, who has grown to favor projecting a more relaxed persona in her work, initially had a skewed perception of how she thought she should act during sessions.
“When you first start, you don’t really know if something is ‘extreme’ or ‘hardcore’ or if it’s really just mild or everyday, garden-variety shit,” Bates says.
Because she initially lacked any formal experience in the profession, she had no perspective by which to gage these new situations. At first, it was challenging to put the mass of information she learned into practice. Seeing bits and pieces of other peoples’ sessions left her unsure of how to carry out an exchange from start to finish. Helping a co-worker flog someone with a paddle was one thing, but carrying out an entire session on her own was something else.
But she was open to experimentation. Throughout her life, Bates has pierced her own ears, nipples, nose and bellybutton, so she is not squeamish when it comes to needles. She recently started “play piercing,” a skilled practice in which sterile needles are inserted just below the surface of someone’s skin—not for jewelry, but for pleasure—and left there temporarily. People like the rush, she supposes.
Today, the services she offers are vast and varied. On her employee profile on the house’s Web site—below a picture that shows her wearing a leather nun habit, looking stern as she raps a small rod against an anonymous woman’s wrist—she supplies a menu of over 50 categories of fetish and role-play scenarios, noting that the list is not exhaustive.
Corporal punishment; sissy training; face slapping; trampling; librarian fantasies; smoking fetishes and human ashtray; foot fetish; food fetish (after which she writes: “Please bring unopened food items”). Though the activities range in intensity and intricacy, all can be enacted upon a client’s request.
Travigne says Bates has blossomed as a mistress during her time at the house, although she can’t offer a personal performance review for any of her employees. She reasons that popping in during the “gals’” appointments would be awkward for everyone. “To have me come in and observe would probably be a little disruptive, maybe a little unnerving—but from what I read on the Internet she’s very good,” she says with a smile.
On messageboards like The Domination Station, people hold fervent online discussions about the local SM scene. Some use the space to find erotic partners and others write testimonials about local pro-doms. On one thread, titled, “Mistress Lenore – Hidden Treasure at [the house],” a satisfied customer writes: I am so glad that i discovered Her! Really, go to the [house], tell Her that You like hardcore abuse, and then let the magic flow. She is a true gem...and for you Booty worshippers...OMG Her Rear is to die for ;)
The conversation quickly degenerates when, a few comments down, a poster called “ah_hah_ah” challenges the compliment: So who at the [house] is not wonderful? Come on now, what is the point of all this slime? As is typical in the anonymous world of messageboards, a written argument ensues, and a number of the house's employees chime in to challenge the nameless provocateur.
A poster named Catherine, who claims to be one of Bates’ co-workers, writes: Lenore is a wonderful lady with a sincerity in her play that has found me asking her on numerous occasions to double with me.
Similar to the early training sessions women undergo at the house, “doubling” is when mistresses team-up in role-plays or other sessions. This kind of teamwork can come in handy, especially during bondage, where men are tied up or restrained with ropes or cables. Bates tells stories of customers losing feeling in their limbs, who have had to be quickly freed from the sometimes-complicated restraints to avoid nerve damage.
Also, though patrons of the house are forbidden from touching employees’ genitals, as direct sexual acts for money are considered prostitution and are illegal under state law, the girls may have sex with each other in front of clients. After all, they aren’t paying each other.
The Kitchen
Recently, during some downtime in a shift, Bates was doing a load of laundry in the small room adjacent the kitchen. One of her co-workers sat at the table, which was scattered with newspapers and snacks, checking her e-mail. Another employee, Louise Gerarde (a work moniker), sat knitting the cream-colored top-half of a coat, the bottom of which was made of a leathery material. The table was scattered with newspapers and snacks.
Gerarde, who has long brown hair and a defined face, has been in the SM scene for 15 years. She started at the house a year and a half ago. When she talks, it’s with a mixture of playfulness and purpose. She jokes with Bates about the Folsom Street Fair, an annual celebration of fetishes that draws scores of leather-clad enthusiasts. The gals went to the event the day before, and a number of them had dressed up for the occassion. Gerarde had worn a strap-on dildo, which at one point Bates says she playfully demonstrated on with her mouth.
Gerarde and Bates sometimes double-up with clients. The two recently had a “pee party,” where they entered midway into another mistresses’ hour-long session—a sort of guest appearance—to pee on a customer. “I don’t always do walk-on golden showers,” Gerarde explains, “because for me, to just drink a bunch of water for a quick minute doesn’t work that well.”
At this point, a woman clad only in underwear and high heels walks into the kitchen with an armful of ropes. With each step of her pointy shoes makes a sharp sound against the linoleum. She casually greets the women at the table as she walks about the room before disappearing again through the curtained doorway.
Gerarde continues her story, talking about the pee party with the same matter-of-factness that a carpenter might talk about installing a cabinet: She describes how the three women took the client into the bathroom, where he laid down in the tub, and both Gerarde and Bates urinated on him. “Some people want it on their chest, some people want to drink it, but he wanted it on his [crotch], so that’s where we peed,” she says. “Lenore is a very good pee-er,” Gerarde says of Bates, a flush of humor in her words. “I kind of get envious of that ability.”
As Gerarde talks, Bates lets out her signature giggle. She has moved from doing laundry to washing dishes, and she starts talking about a date she might have later that evening. She isn’t sure, though, because the last time she had plans with the guy, he flaked. Apparently he had drank too much and passed out before he could call her.
Bates hasn’t been in a committed relationship since she started working as a dominatrix. In an earlier interview, she explains why: “This might be superstitious of me, but I feel like when you have the relationship talk and things are official, that’s pretty much when it goes downhill for me.” She’s cautious about commitment and says that nearly every guy she has been with has ended up cheating on her. She’s not a big fan of monogamy, but draws the line at dishonesty.
“All I care about is people lying to me or hiding things from me—or being the last person to know something that I should have been one of the first people to know.”
Still, she looks forward to the possibility of a date in her future. If all goes well, she might keep seeing him. When she first met the new prospect, she dubbed him “Captain Wonderful,” but she says he now risks being demoted to “Captain Wonderflake.” Her shift ends at 5, less than an hour away. She’ll have to wait and see.
